In all appearances, Phil is featured as a heavy artillery arms dealer, selling the protagonist military-style weaponry which can devastate easily, such as Grenades, Rocket Launchers, Miniguns, etc. He claims to have served in the military; however, it is been revealed that he was never in the army. He was been turned down many times due to his bad temper and heavy drinking.

Phil is been featured as a heavy drinker. He distills his own alcohol, a dangerous and highly explosive drink known as "Boomshine" which Phil started distilling and selling in Vice City around 1984. Phil says during a phone conversation with Tommy Vercetti that due to his heavy Boomshine drinking, he is blind in his left eye.

One of Phil's most notable features is his one arm. In his appearance during GTA Vice City Stories and GTA Vice City, he still has both arms, but in the last mission that he appears in during GTA Vice City, a bomb goes off next to him and his arm is blown off. In GTA Liberty City Stories and GTA III, Phil obviously has only one arm.

After completing some jobs for Marty and eventually killing him because he tried to pimp Louise, Vic returns with Phil and saves him from Jerry's goons who want to finish him for betraying Jerry. After was being saved by Vic, Phil promises to stay sober from now on; however, he begins to drink again when Armando Mendez kills Louise. Phil, wanting revenge with the Mendez Brothers, gets drunk and blows up the entrance of Fort Baxter Air Base so Vic can steal a Hunter helicopter to attack the Mendez compound.

GTA Vice City (1986)

In his next appearance, Tommy Vercetti hires Phil to pull off a bank robbery in the mission The Shootist. Phil is the one who suggests Tommy should employ Hillary King as a getaway driver in the mission The Driver. After the robbery (The Job), Phil invites Tommy to work for him in order to get been fixed with firepower. After Tommy kills Phil's rival gun dealer Pedro Garcia, a drunken Phil invites Tommy over to check out a Boomshine bomb he had set up, wired to a remote detonator. The remote doesn't work the first time, so Phil changes its batteries for fresh ones sitting beside the bomb. Now standing one meter away from the powerful explosive, in inebriated carelessness, he accidently squeezes the remote's trigger, detonating the bomb and blowing off his own arm. Tommy drives Phil to an ex-army surgeon to be patched up.

GTA Liberty City Stories (1998)

GTA III (2001)

In the mission Arms Shortage, corrupt LCPD cop Ray Machowski commissions Claude to go and meet Phil at his shop, since some members of the Colombian Cartel tried to extort weapons out of Phil. Phil and Claude attack the Cartel men as they arrive and kill them, preventing them from stealing Phil's weapons. During this mission, Phil claims to have lost his arm in Nicaragua, but it is been revealed later in GTA Vice City that his arm was blown off in a boomshine bomb explosion.

Hunter Platin voiced Phil in this game. In the credits for the game, he is listed as Phil the One-Armed Bandit.

Trivia

Phil is the character to appear in most games throughout the series, appearing in four altogether.

In GTA Vice City, Phil stats in a phone call following "Gun Runner" that he can only see with one eye because of prolonged intake of Boomshine.

In Boomshine Saigon, it clearly shows Phil blowing off his right arm, not his left arm. This is likely simply a mistake in the creation of the cut scene, where they had Phil standing with the bomb to his right, rather than standing on the other side of the bench, with the bomb to his left. Successfully delivering Phil to his friend's place shows Phil correctly, missing his left arm and still having his right.